The Europe of yesteryear was permanently plagued by its woes - the memory of the Nazi concentration camps, the survival of the gulag and the Soviet camps. Then terror seemed to have an unending mandate on the other side of the Iron Curtain and when the west seemed to have accepted living with it, three men brought down communism and changed the course of history: Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Pope John Paul II and Ronald Reagan.
In this uncommon trio, Reagan was the exception. President of a superpower, he started the Strategic Defence Initiative precisely when the USSR was no longer capable of taking up such a challenge. His role was essential and I do not wish to underestimate it.
Yet, as a welcoming remark to Pope Benedict XVI, it is the other two figures, both of whom I had met, that I wish to refer to, as in these two men the sole driving force was the mind.
Everyone knows Josef Stalin's question "The Pope? How many divisions does he have?" The question totally sums up his triumphant nihilism and speaks of a 20th century when Man idolised Man, and when the sword seemed mightier than the pen, and when tanks ruled over, or rolled over, ideas. Today, communism and Nazism are dead, but nihilism, dressed in well-cut suits, continues to exist.
The Pope will be in Malta right in the middle of the economic crisis, which is also a moral crisis, born on the rubble of ideologies based on the cult of money, and of new tragedies, notably that of the boat people who die in the Mediterranean. The problem has not been solved because it affects Maltese shores less, it has merely been shifted towards Turkish and Greek shores.
Solzhenitsyn, ex- zaklioutchoniï (prisoner of the Gulag system), never stopped fighting for freedom through his writings. In June 1976, a few months into his exile in Europe, he finally (and of his own free will) chose to retire near the small village of Cavendish in Vermont, USA.
Solitary, surrounded only by silence, squirrels and his family, the survivor of war, of the gulag system and cancer had undertaken an unequal fight against the march of time to complete his gigantic historical and literary tragedy, The Red Wheel, successfully. He had started working on this decades earlier, as far back as 1936.
It was in this house in Vermont that I had the privilege of paying him a visit and spending a few hours in his company in 1983. From dawn till dusk, this tireless tightrope walker, progressing between the past and his metamorphoses, working now at one table and now another, from his manuscript to the documents he had collected during his lifetime, this 'devourer of history', heated his cold office during the winter months with the memories of ordinary people who populated his books, all the while savouring the pleasure of writing the chef d'oeuvre of his lifetime.
In the summers, he worked at a table in the open air, surrounded by five birches that formed a natural arbour around him with his wife Alia, always by his side, acting as adviser, helper and proofreader. This hard work fully engrossed him. Before parting company, I asked him if he hoped to return to his country one day. His reply came without any hesitation. "Yes, I'll go home before my death."
His response, so quick and clear, took me by surprise. Nothing at that time could have forecast the fall of the Soviet empire. Yet, Solzhenitsyn, more isolated than ever during his American exile, ignored doubt. His belief in the power of the mind was so unwavering, that he refused to despair.
Ten years later, at the height of Glasnost, 'Memorial', the association of ex-zaklioutchoniï, asked for the end of his banishment. In the spring of 1994, Solzhenitsyn bade farewell to 'blessed Vermont' that had been so gentle to him and returned to Russia, leaving behind only the tomb of one of his sons who had died a few weeks before his departure.
One single book, The Gulag Archipelago, sufficed to let the whole world know the truth about Communism and to rattle the very foundations of the Soviet dictatorship. His books had boosted those who resisted.
And divisions of the Red Army had shown their impotence against the might of the naked man, against the weight of the writer. The exile returned home hailed like a prophet, like a king.
Karol Wojtyła was also a lone man at the beginning of his pontificate. We have forgotten the crown of criticisms that was laid upon him for years. After long years and several battles, the freshness of his faith, and suffering, universal love and admiration made him a man capable of pitting his spiritual force against the durable ambitions of the Soviet regime and that of devastating capitalism.
This Pope, who knew how to smile, and laugh too, never compromised when it came to liberating the lives of men. There were no army divisions, but without him and without Solzhenitsyn, the Polish workers of Solidarnosc would have been bereft of hope.
Without him, Lech Walesa, who I had the pleasure to meet here in Malta as guest of President Emeritus Guido de Marco and of the Strickland Foundation, would have ended up at the gallows of the Polish state of emergency. If a Social Europe exists today, it is the one that he helped create. Later, during the George W. Bush presidency, he was the man who, along with France, refused to enter into the deathly justification of the clash of civilisations.
Could we allow the chasms between America wounded by the 9/11 attacks and the warmongers on the other side, trained at its school and hell-bent on turning against their former paymasters, or between the opulence of some continents and the great misery of others to widen? Of course not.
I accompanied French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin when he paid a visit to Pope John Paul a few days after US troops entered Baghdad. It was essential to tell men of goodwill, Muslims and Christians alike, especially to Christians of the Arab world, who are always the victims of such confrontations, that we did not want to engage in a new 'crusade'.
Rome seemed silent through the windows of the Vatican. Coloured by the sunset, one could see the hues of ochre, yellow, red and incandescent grey of the city that was an imperial capital 2,000 years ago. At the very end of his private library, huddled in his armchair, weak yet solid, his head raised, was John Paul. To this observer, light picked him out and shone on his white robes.
His china blue eyes lifted and met mine. He questioned me about my actions in Poland during Solidarnosc They were modest actions in truth. I had, like many of my countrymen, taken food, clothing and medicines to workers at Nowa Hutta. The Pope then wanted to know what I had done in Sarajevo during the war in the Balkans.
He was tired and ill, but he found inner resources seemingly drawing strength from encyclicals and bibles printed in all languages stored in the 15th-century bookshelves that surrounded the room.
I spoke to him about Bosnia and Lebanon, all the while thinking about his life. This man had known everything: Communism, war, terrorism, the persecution of the Jews. It was tremendous, but not surprising, that a man like him, the Pope who had recognised the Jews as the Chosen People, refused to believe in a binary vision of the world where Islam and Christianity were condemned to confront each other.
To conclude this unexpected conversation, he straightened himself up in his armchair and said, hammering the arm-rest with his right hand, "Alors, vive la France!" Deliberately forgetful of all protocol, I stood up, my arms up in the air and shouted: "Viva il Papa!". He smiled.
We left the Vatican to go to the Farnesina, the seat of the Italian foreign affairs ministry, but that evening the memory of his face did not leave me. I saw John Paul a year later. I went with my wife, Noëlle, to attend the private Mass he celebrated every morning in his quarters. I was asked to read the epistle by Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, his private secretary.
After the ceremony, I attempted to speak to him but it was too late. That morning, I realised that the fighter had become a man in pain whose last efforts were dedicated to prayer.
When Pope Benedict comes to Malta, he will walk in the steps of John Paul and of those who refuse to despair. Yet there are many reasons to give up hope.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has had an influence for a tragically long period on both shores of the Mediterranean. It leads people to accept the servitude of hatred.
Our inland sea remains a cemetery for boat people who never reach Europe. Men profit from the sale of other human beings. The beauty of our shores is jeopardised by large-scale pollution.
Our Mediterranean heritage is in a state of abandonment and refuge is nowhere to be found.
Everywhere, secularism has created emptiness and solitude. Obviously, our secularity is not to be called into question, but everyone knows that separating the cities of men and the city of God is a necessity. John Paul himself celebrated our maxim, Liberté, égalité, fraternité, and gave France a great cardinal, Jean-Marie Aaron Lustiger, who was also a firm believer in the values of the French Republic. Secularism protects believers and non-believers alike but it doesn't in any way signify the death of the mind.
Mario Vargas Llosa, the Peruvian writer, was right to remind us that liberal thinkers themselves assert the need for an intensive religious and cultural life as "an indispensable supplement to cement civilisation". Catholicism was the tabernacle of Greek and Latin culture and that of the ancient wisdom of prophets from Israel to Plato and Saint Augustine. Ever since Golgotha, it has always given a special place to human suffering and has unceasingly questioned evil.
It is suicidal for us to turn away from such colourful past (Semitic, Greek and Latin at the same time) that gives life to the Eternal Orient in each one of us. We, Europeans, need to have the courage to defend our ideas, our convictions, even if sometimes they seem very feeble compared to the sinister forces, frequently obscure, that rule the world. A great deal is at stake and Europe is often loathe to affirm its desire for political and spiritual unity.
Solzhenitsyn and John Paul II remind us that no battle is lost at the outset. It is now that our future is being decided on. It is vain to weep about the lack of spirit, as Albert Camus says, "You just have to work for it". Our Europe is that of Bach and Mozart, the continent of freedom and of divine creativity. Let us work for this Europe born on the shores of the Mediterranean which has been home to humanism. This was and remains French President Nicolas Sarkozy's major perception (during a recent Paris meeting, he asked me many questions about it and about Malta).
Welcome to Malta, dear Benedict, this little island is a great nation because of what it represents, a land full of symbolism with a spirit distilled of Europe and the Mediterranean - Semitic in more than name.
Translated by Tudor Alexis. The original version in French can be read at www.ambafrance-mt.org.
Mr Rondeau is French Ambassador to Malta.